Unending Resolve Issues - PvP (mainly arena)

UE has 2 components - a shield wall style dmg reduction and an immunity to silence/interrupt effects. In theory, that's awesome. In practice, I find myself using it 100% of the time for the interrupt immunity offensively or defensively to peel. I ignore the dmg reduction component entirely because I absolutely need the other effect to do burst dmg (Haunt/MG or CBs) or cast a Fear. In and of itself, that's not the end of the world, but when looking at the broader picture of overall survivbility + ability cooldown/set bonus, we start to run into issues.

UE is a default 3 min CD. That's absolutely huge. Most trinkets/offensive burst abilities are on 2min CD or shorter, meaning UE as a counter-burst mechanism is already too long. Moreover, if you just look at it as an Aura Mastery (which is how most pvp locks will start to view it), a 3min CD is over the top. Even the set bonus is a meager 20 sec reduction, which does nothing to solve the problem. Add in that we already have 2 long-CD defensives (bubble 3min and dark regen/HS 2min) and no short-CD defensives aside from the at best OK Twilight Ward, and it becomes clear to me that UE is trying to do too many things and doesn't succeed well at either of them.

In the current state, most teams I'm playing are doing the 'zomg facetrain the lock' strat. Shocker. This applies to double melee, double casters and mixed comps alike. I'm blowing bubble/DR/HS any time I need to counter burst, but Pillar/Shatter/BM/etc. are all back up before I have another CD ready to make life easier for my healer. Even if I pop UE, it only delays the cycle 1 extra CD rotation. Moreover, I can't do that if I want to put out a kill ever thanks to my instants aside from shadowburn being mediocre.

TLDR - I think both UE and our 2-piece set bonus need to change. We need a silence/interrupt immunity spell on a 2min CD. We need a separate 20-30% dmg reduction spell on a 1-1.5min CD. This can be done in any number of ways, but here's the off the top of my head one. I'm sure there are better ones...

How about the pet shield we have lasts until its broken from damage like mage shield, instead of lasting "X" amount of seconds. I do agree that the CD on UE is way to long at 3 mins. Like you said it's almost better in most situations as on offensive spell rather then a defensive one. !.5 min with 20 sec reduction seems inline.
I like the dark soul Idea also.

I completely agree, it almost has to be used offensively in every situation so you can apply pressure on opponents as a warlock when being focused. Especially against warriors between pummel ,heroic throw silence, shockwave charge stun, and 2 spell reflects it can be a struggle for even a seasoned warlock to apply any damage with an average warrior around because all of that is on relatively short cooldowns.
In my opinion they could completely take away the damage reduction for a more frequent interupt immunity because at this point we need it.

I completely agree, it almost has to be used offensively in every situation so you can apply pressure on opponents as a warlock when being focused. Especially against warriors between pummel ,heroic throw silence, shockwave charge stun, and 2 spell reflects it can be a struggle for even a seasoned warlock to apply any damage with an average warrior around because all of that is on relatively short cooldowns.
In my opinion they could completely take away the damage reduction for a more frequent interupt immunity because at this point we need it.

And people will simply adapt to it and stun/fear/poly/whatever as soon as you use it and make you waste your interrupt immunity while no longer having your big damage reduction for those o shit moments.

I had previously proposed:
Fel Tongue:
Whenever struck by an interrupting ability that does not lock you out of any spell school, you become immune to the next interrupt of silencing effect. 45 seconds cooldown.
Makes fakecasting smarter.

But yeah, we already told Xelnath that Unending Resolve would be used more as an offensive ability, so I'm guessing it probably wouldn't change.
I would've liked it to give 25% base damage reduction and when activated give 40% damage reduction. The passive effect is disabled while the spell is on cooldown.

I had previously proposed:
Fel Tongue:
Whenever struck by an interrupting ability that does not lock you out of any spell school, you become immune to the next interrupt of silencing effect. 45 seconds cooldown.
Makes fakecasting smarter.

But yeah, we already told Xelnath that Unending Resolve would be used more as an offensive ability, so I'm guessing it probably wouldn't change.
I would've liked it to give 25% base damage reduction and when activated give 40% damage reduction. The passive effect is disabled while the spell is on cooldown.

The problem is they are in love with the idea of warlocks trading one thing for the other (life for mana, dmg for a heal, etc.). In theory it's fine, but in practice, they give us no real choice. Want to use UE as an AM? Fine, but no 40% reduction for you! OK, but since I can't kill anything without that AM effect, I don;t really have a choice to use the 40% DR component if I have any interest in winning a match. We simply can't create reliable casting windows without it.

They need to re-evaluate a lot of our supposed 'choices' and make them more appealing. Just as an example, an elle shamie can glyph Lightning Bolt to be castable while moving for a 5% dmg loss. That is a choice that depending on the situation, I can find a benefit with both. Now look at KC. We can cast on the move, but we are hit with a 50% casting reduction AND a snare? That's not a choice, it's a joke.

The warlock 'flavor' they feel obligated to impose upon us really needs to be tweaked to be less painful.

I had previously proposed:
Fel Tongue:
Whenever struck by an interrupting ability that does not lock you out of any spell school, you become immune to the next interrupt of silencing effect. 45 seconds cooldown.
Makes fakecasting smarter.

But yeah, we already told Xelnath that Unending Resolve would be used more as an offensive ability, so I'm guessing it probably wouldn't change.
I would've liked it to give 25% base damage reduction and when activated give 40% damage reduction. The passive effect is disabled while the spell is on cooldown.

Yeah, but then noone will ever use it offensively unless they are 100% certain they'll get the kill.
In cata we didn't have a interrupt/silence immunity either so giving people the choice between 25% passive damage reduction ( which is insane) or a 8second 40% damage reduction and counterable silence/interrupt immunity...

The problem is they are in love with the idea of warlocks trading one thing for the other (life for mana, dmg for a heal, etc.). In theory it's fine, but in practice, they give us no real choice. Want to use UE as an AM? Fine, but no 40% reduction for you! OK, but since I can't kill anything without that AM effect, I don;t really have a choice to use the 40% DR component if I have any interest in winning a match. We simply can't create reliable casting windows without it.

They need to re-evaluate a lot of our supposed 'choices' and make them more appealing. Just as an example, an elle shamie can glyph Lightning Bolt to be castable while moving for a 5% dmg loss. That is a choice that depending on the situation, I can find a benefit with both. Now look at KC. We can cast on the move, but we are hit with a 50% casting reduction AND a snare? That's not a choice, it's a joke.

The warlock 'flavor' they feel obligated to impose upon us really needs to be tweaked to be less painful.

Well, it should just be more powerful if you're trading something. The problem is that 70% of the playerbase is incapable of noticing the trade-off that we're doing, and deem our abilities OP. As a result, we get the same effect as other classes except we gain a penalty.
The idea of consequences with abilities is really cool, and it makes you want to use your spells more intelligently, which is great. But the way it's implemented right now sucks. I'd rather have each and every single toolkit a mage has.

Well, it should just be more powerful if you're trading something. The problem is that 70% of the playerbase is incapable of noticing the trade-off that we're doing, and deem our abilities OP. As a result, we get the same effect as other classes except we gain a penalty.
The idea of consequences with abilities is really cool, and it makes you want to use your spells more intelligently, which is great. But the way it's implemented right now sucks. I'd rather have each and every single toolkit a mage has.

Yeah, pretty much. I think that balance dictates that the gains can't be too good, or we will be OP. That's fair, but I agree that what we end up with is measurable penalties without any significant benefit. Stepping outside of pvp for a second, just look at Lifetap. We trade HP/GCDs for mana. Infinite mana! Great, right? Well, every other dps caster already has infinite mana - without having to sacrifice anything for it.

Xel and co seem to value flavor more than substance at times, which cripples us in some regards. We really need a balance pass-through if we can hope to compete in pvp. Or, heaven forbid, actually enjoy it. Even when I'm winning games on my lock, I don't come out having enjoyed playing. I haven't felt this at the mercy of my opponents in terms of game pacing since the days of SL/SL - imo the low point for fun in warlock pvp.

The current design: encourages training locks 24/7, does not give us sufficient defensives to survive that training, and does not give us any way to cast offensively and impact the flow of a match in any meaningful way (aside from our 2:40 UE CD).